What's the connection between even/odd harmonics and even/odd (transfer) functions?

1.1k Views Asked by At

What's the connection between even/odd harmonics and even/odd (transfer) functions?

Why do they correspond to each other?

Particularly, if the transfer function is/contains even or odd functions, then why does this lead to the output signal having even or odd functions correspondingly?

Harmonics are the components of a signal that exist as integer multiples of the signal. Even harmonics are: $2f, 4f, ...$, odd are: $1f, 3f, ...$.

A transfer function is some sort of "mapping" that usually applies some sort of "effect" to a signal, e.g. an audio signal. It's often a Fourier transform of some input function.

1

There are 1 best solutions below

4
On

There are only so many words available to scientists and mathematicians. Sometimes the same words are appropriated for many different purposes. In this case, "even--odd" is appropriated for many different dichotomies: even and odd integers; even and odd functions; even and odd harmonics. From a linguistic point of view, it might be fun to think about whether there are any more mathematical uses of "even--odd" to represent a dichotomy. But from a mathematical point of view, there's no real significance.